Bankers’ secret bailout [update 2]

Remember TARP—the so-called “troubled assets” “relief” programme that cost US taxpayers US $700 billion? The programme that every bank "had to have", but few are now prepared to defend?

Remember those bailouts?

Guess what?

While that money was being shovelled out the front door, a whole new tranche of bailout billions was being ever-so-quietly shovelled out the back.

Did I say billions? What an I talking about.

The amount given away under the veil of secrecy was US$7.77 trillion!

That’s right, US$7.7 trillion. Secretly created by the Fed out of thin air, loaned to the banks at zero interest … and then “borrowed back” at a higher rate in order to help banks who’d stopped bothering even trying to help themselves.

US$7.7 trillion! Just given away.

Sort of puts the failed TARP programme into perspective, huh?

At times like this, you need Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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[Hat tip David Henderson]

UPDATE 1:  We’ve talked about this before, but in case you’d forgotten about where some of this money went, it went to bailing out two of Australia’s big four banks, on whom our own local banks either lean or are fully-owned subsidiaries of:

… National Australia Bank [ASX: NAB] had to borrow USD$4.5 billion from the US Federal Reserve during 2008 and 2009.
And Westpac Banking Corp [ASX: WBC] needed USD$1.09 billion in January of 2008 and 2009…
Westpac and NAB needed the loans because they were on the verge of going belly up…
For the past two years you’ve had to put up with a constant drone of commentary from the mainstream telling you that Australia’s banks are different… this bombshell from the Federal Reserve proves otherwise. And it proves we at Money Morning Australia have been right to call the Aussie banks for what they are.

UPDATE 2:  The Fed has lashed out at the 'errors' in Bloomberg’s reporting of the secret bailout.  The Fed says Bloomberg falsely reported that $7 trillion was created out of thin air and used to secretly bail out banks.

The Fed is correct: $7 trillion was counterfeited and handed out to the friends of Federal Reserve. The real number is not $7 trillion, it was a mammoth sixteen trillion dollars that was counterfeited and handed out to the friends of Federal Reserve. SOURCE: page 144 of this document: www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf